War Song
by Lina Hino
Summary: Sometimes what fate originally designed sometimes needs revision. A set path, a set destiny, to be completely rewritten. But what of the results of that revision? How fast can a person break upon knowing 2 different lives. Of one soul that is meant to be in 2 worlds at the same time?
1. Where' do we begin? Or it is 'When?

War Song

Author's Note: I am fanfic-ing after a VERY long time of life getting in the way. Just a heads up: It's a crossover, I haven't written or posted anything in years so I do need to get back into things and 9/11 is mentioned. This chapter is mainly shit to have something for me to bounce with. Not exactly world building but a setup of sorts. And yes, lord above, there's an OC but they're actually a crossover character from an established series and characters will be OOC. It's fanfiction *shrug*

Chapter 0: Where do we begin? Or should it be 'When do we being'?

_1983 – Tony age 14_

If anybody were to tell young genius Tony Stark of his father's multiple indiscretions against his mother, the boy would just shrug it off and continue taking apart a carburetor or work on the computer code to give life to the single-armed robot prototype for his quickly approaching debut to MIT. From the moment he could recognize his parent's failing marriage, Tony had turned a blind eye to his father's affairs with the many PA's and groupies who always seemed to follow him at demonstrations and galas. Yet, those affairs never gave fruit to any life of sorts until now. For about a year there were many phone calls that his mother would neglect to answer or those calls would be answered by Jarvis before a firm word was spoken and receiver placed back down. The obvious thus followed when his father came home out of nowhere one day in the midst of a week which was supposed to be filled with contract meetings. The older man smelt of alcohol and women's perfume per usual and yet the usual blue eyes were lacking any and all foolishness or violence which would typically follow the man's drinking binges.

'Maria, why didn't you tell me?' Were the words spoken before his parents relocated to the office, screams and shouts followed by breaking glassware echoing around before Jarvis redirected him to a different room.

So far for the _business_ look his father had

The fight was not drawn out for long, he only wished it was for a more strategic retreat that didn't call for being in the dinning room, before his father erupted from his office and grabbed his arm and hailing Jarvis to take them to the hospital.

His mother didn't tag along, especially once Tony had fit the pieces together as to why they were at the hospital. A doctor had immediately grabbed for his father's attention and the elder man dragged into an operating theater as he was left in the hallway. To his right was an elder couple that was in tears staring forlorn at the double doors that were still swinging.

Minutes seemed like hours as the time crawled. Time that was being wasted in his honest opinion of a problem that his father would probably solve with a load of money and a signed non-disclosure agreement to assure that a scandal like this would remain mum and away from the press. It seemed though that luck was not going to be on the side of the Weapon's Monger Howard Stark. Nursing staff and doctors alike were scrambling in numbers in and out of the operating room with blood bags and different utensils as the seconds ticked by. The elderly couple that was silently weeping was now trying to talk to the staff that was cycling in and out. Their calls going unanswered as it seemed the staff was getting more and more desperate to get the needed items for what they were trying to achieve inside the theater yet their pacing started to falter as the time crawled on. Taking a seat on a cold plastic chair, Tony mainly observed the couple until the hall was deathly quiet. Straying his eyes to the now stilled theater doors it was obvious what happened. As his father stepped out of the room with a doctor that had hastily torn off his bloodied scrubs to try and look unshaken, the couple clasped each other's hands as the doctor then knelt down to their level.

'I'm sorry. She did not survive the procedure.' Were the doctor's words as the woman started to shake her head and accuse the doctor of lying to her and how unkind it is to lie to an old woman.

'The baby? What about her baby?' The husband inquired almost too calmly as his hands changed from holding shaking hands to rubbing circles over his wife's back.

'We do not know if the baby will survive the night. I'm sorry I don't have better news. She is not a full term baby, we will have to let nature decide.' The doctor spoke while combing fingers through short hair.

'She? A girl? Chelsea had a girl?' The elder man spoke softly, almost incredulously, at the doctor's words.

As suspected, and it didn't take much for him to figure, Tony wanted to scoff at the clueless expression on his father's face. The man couldn't be a father to him, what did the world think of the man spawning another child that was going to be ignored just as much as he was? Worse on top of that his mother barely skated by with having him so this child by a mistress would get no love if placed into his father's 'loving' custody. The couple that was now in their grief of losing their only granddaughter were in no shape to potentially take care of a newborn. And in the following hours, with the hospital lawyer present, his father would try to argue with the couple of them finding someone else to take the child if the babe were to survive her impromptu arrival. In the end, money had no such easy influence as the older man pointed to Howard and gave a complete dressing down on his lack of pride as a man. After that since there was nothing left that could be said or done at the immediate moment, Tony found himself back in the car with his father and Jarvis heading back to the mansion.

To say the least, upon the news of a baby girl potentially being brought into Stark Manor, Maria Stark gave a most unexpected response.

'She will live here. She is your daughter and proof of your failure of being impervious to God's judgment.' Were her bitter words before she turned heel and retreated to the 2nd floor of the manor.

If this incident weren't already past the final nail into the coffin of their marriage, this would be the 'End Game' play that would have.

4 weeks later, Rhea Abigail Stark was brought into the Stark Manor

_1986 – Tony age 17, Rhea age 3_

It wasn't supposed to happen like this. He had been working on Dummy's coding yet again as the storm raged overhead and Obadiah lounged in the study going over some of the newer Military contracts that were acquired in the past week. Tony had finished his thesis for his electrical engineering earlier in the day as his parents had walked out the door for the gala they had to make an appearance at. Rhea had been settled for the night just 2 hours before the loud knocking echoed the halls. With 2 officers at the door, Tony had wondered what the hell had been going on for the cops to show up but as Obi allowed them into the house and everyone in attendance took a seat in the office that was when the ball was dropped.

They have no idea yet of how but it was explained to him in a way that insulted his level of intelligence that the accident had killed both of his parents and Jarvis.

It wasn't even the fact of his parents being dead that really hit him more it was that Jarvis, the man who was always around just as much as Obi, was dead. The elder silver-haired man had been a constant presence in his life. He was always around when his father was drunk or his mother was absent. Even after Rhea was born and he was off at college the man would be one of his main contacts along with Obi to give updates on how his schooling was going and hear of the small milestones that the little girl who called him 'Toto' achieved.

So now we're like a horrible comic-go-wrong. That Bruce Wayne shit but with his parents being the absentee-type and a under 5-year-old sibling that needed watching over added in for an extra laugh.

Too absorbed in finishing his Master's, Tony did not see how Obi too-happily took over his father's place as the head of Stark Industries. How his little sister were to soon call the man 'papa' and follow him like a duckling and take up a scary proficiency of taking apart and reassembling weapons and some of Tony's dust-covered prototypes.

_1990 – Tony age 21, Rhea age 7 _

'The Prodigal Son has returned'

It was one of _many_ differing, yet similar, titles for the articles running in all the newspapers and trash rags when Tony came back from finishing up his college work and the majority of his partying to take up his father's mantle with more ideas than anyone could muster to further technology and weapons. Obi was the first to welcome him back with open arms and a broad smirk as they toured a facility that they just completed the ribbon cut for. The building wasn't completely new but mainly refurbished around Howard's giant arc reactor that had remained powered on since Tony was still a small child. If there was one thing that Tony had started to notice about himself…..well not really recently noticing since the apple really didn't fall far from the tree; he was modeling to be just like the man he loathed.

Walking into one of the main labs and standing out like a sore thumb was a child with black hair pulled back and up into a bun with glasses perched on the bridge of her nose as her hands played with a gun with great ease. Tony at first was going to ask why there was a child in the labs until the girl turned and abandoned her post. Mismatched eyes bore into his before a slight tilt of her lips gave way to a shy smile.

"Hey Tony. So you're back for good or are you just going to work with Obi?" Were the girl's words before surprise really filled him.

"Rhea? Obi what is she doing in the lab? And….a gun?!" He had turned to his mentor. 

"She's just like your old man and you. She has been tearing apart some of your things and rebuilding them for some time now. But you've been in school so I am not surprised that you didn't know. You stopped calling after you got your second Master's and wanted to travel. I wasn't going to stop you since you told me when you wanted to take over." The bald man chuckled before resting a hand on his shoulder.

Rhea, his sister his mind so strongly reminded him, took off her glasses and slid them into her back pocket before having a faraway look in her eyes. The mismatched blue and brown eyes making her spaced-out look unnerving. Almost as if she could see something that neither of them could. If anything Tony were to do at the moment would be to look at what the hell his sister was doing in the lab but when his stomach as well as her stomach rumbled Obi howled in laughter before having each sibling on his side and directing them out of the lab to obtain food. Once reaching the cafeteria of the building the siblings barely pecked at their food as Obi's assistant, formerly Howard's, Virginia 'Pepper' came up beside the elder men and started at rapid-fire pace calling out the scheduled meetings and demonstrations that were up and coming.

If Tony were to look back at 1990, he knew he should have done something instead of being an absentee brother to a genius just like him. Had he seen in the fullest extent of Obi's manipulation from the beginning…. If only.

_1999 –Tony age 30, Rhea 16_

If not being the youngest multibillionaire to make it in the weapon's industry wasn't ego-inflating enough, Tony could say that 1999 was one of his better years. Give or take a few odds and ends happening. The weapons contracts were booming, money was flowing into the company even quicker than imagined from the combined ingenuity of both Tony's talent and Rhea's startling creativity. Tony made the missiles and big toys as Rhea was more subtle, mainly helping develop artillery weapons for the ground soldiers with the situation in the Middle East starting to become headline news again. The Gulf War may have passed but tensions always ran high in countries with resources like oil. It was of no consequence though to Tony. Designs were like a ballad that needed to be written and sung and thus were with many sleepless nights followed by an equally numbered amount of sleepless nights of celebration with alcohol, women and fast cars. This would be the year that he met Maya and science of a different type seemed like a close reality.

That New Year's was the best even if he did do a lecture on integrated circuitry while completely off-his-ass drunk in Switzerland and rubbed elbows with a man of whom he greatly admired his work. Oh how fate is such a fickle thing in seeing Ho Yinsen this year and then to see him again down the road but not in the presence of the scientific community but in a dingy cave in the desert with a car battery the only thing keeping his heart from being torn to shreds. But we're getting ahead of ourselves here, aren't we? With Tony running the company a bit more actively, Pepper was appointed his PA and thus began the weird and fantastic chemistry and friendship. Rhea and Tony may be geniuses but have completely different goals in mind. The teenaged genius that was getting to know her brother had her goals set in mind. Instead of marching forward like the force of nature her brother is, Rhea decided to go to school like any normal kid. She had a moral compass that made Tony shake his head in exasperation and would tease her anytime she would break into his old Captain America memorabilia that he put under lock and key after a nasty fight he had once had with his father as a boy.

The one thing that Tony hadn't expected although he should have seen it coming was her big announcement one night after they had landed another extension on a defense contract just before the year was going to end. It was her big 'surprise' that she wanted to tell him and Obi before Tony went to the conference overseas.

'I want to become a soldier. I don't want to just make their weapons and develop their vests. I want to be out there and make _sure_ they work. What good are we if we do not go into the field and verify that what we create works? Demonstrations and test runs in an abandoned field is great but honesty. I want to enlist early into the military. Do I have your blessings?' Were the words of a starry-eyed and hopeful girl, all innocence still well in place and naive to the true brutality of the real world.

With all her genius and her studies into numerous types of warfare throughout the ages, Tony just believed that she was researching for newer edges of weapon development. Joining the military was the last thing that he thought his little sister would want to do. She was a brilliant strategist but she was still a child. Even if he wasn't there for her awkward crawling and walking phase, Tony still could only see the weak and small baby that was struggling for breath when he was just a teen and not the sharp witted young woman that he was hoping wouldn't take the path that he and their father had already carved into stone.

Whether the stone being the stone of destroyed caves or headstones for the dead that were the end result of the weapons were to be a different story

_2001- Tony age 32, Rhea 18_

It was barely the start of the senior year for Rhea when it happened. Tony was barely sober as Pepper had busted into his room and had the house AI, Jarvis, turn on the news. Smoke billowed out of one of the Twin Towers and the journalist was speaking rapidly although their words didn't register to Tony as his phone started to ring on his bedside table. It was Obi, he had just barely gotten out of the tower that got hit after conducting some Stark Industries business that Tony couldn't juggle with the R&D meeting that he was supposed to have in a couple hours' time here in California. A few tense moments of conversation with Obi confirmed that all the other board members that were with Obi for the finance meetings were already at their hotels and watching these events unfold in the safety of the rooms. Once terminating the call and moving to the living room that's when Tony saw that Rhea was up and sitting on the couch shaking her head slowly. In the recent months his sister had been dealing with night terrors that could wake the dead. Her screams would echo throughout the house and have Jarvis startling the shit out of him in the lab when he would be trying to work. Throughout the years the teen had been adamant about blending in and wore a contact in her eye to make her traits completely Stark but this morning she passed on it in her morning routine and had that spaced-off look.

"No, no…..please don't. Don't make those nightmares come true." Her chest heaved as the clock on the bottom corner of the TV display showed the time of 9:01 AM.

"Rhea…what's wrong?" He inquired before she violently shook her head and jumped to her feet.

"STOP IT! I DON'T WANT TO SEE THIS!" She cried before Tony saw behind the smoke another plane going toward the 2nd tower.

When 9:03AM flashed on the bottom on the TV display the south tower was hit, the reporter was going crazy and cameras were being panned, but the damage had been done. Rhea froze in place and went pale. Her lips trembled as her eyes unfocused and face went slack her breath caught in her chest. Tony almost swore that she was going to pass out and yet… 

"This is…no. Why? Their screams…..I can hear it. Not just in my nightmares. They're real. Make it stop. Stop it…..stop it!" Her voice was rasp as she slid to her knees and her hands were trying to either cover her ears or rip them off, he couldn't tell which she was trying to do.

Never had he seen someone have a panic attack before, let alone a potential psychotic break, but as he watched her mumble and shake her head and cry for the voices to stop Pepper was beside the teenager and was trying to get her to talk.

'I've been hearing them for months Pepper. Their screams, their cries…..I can smell the blood and smoke. I thought I would have time before this happened.' We were slowly calming words as the PA rubbed her cool arms and clammy hands. 

The worst attack the US had ever seen since the Pearl Harbor bombing that placed the US to go to war with Japan, granted there were many attacks of terror that preceded this and more to come in the following years and this wasn't the first time the World Trade towers were bombed…but what could you really say. The world stood still, horror and tears and a sudden re-emergence of patriotism almost made Tony believe that this would put the country back into where it needed to be. His drive to help soldiers get the damn terrorists out of their caves was strong and yet there was still that distance. He lost no one as far as friend or family. And his sister had yet to be called in for her basic since she was still not done with high school. 

It wasn't but a few months after the attacks though, Rhea truly felt her calling and had pulled the 'Genius Card' and tested out and got her diploma as soon as she could. And with the ink barely dry and her status as a student changed to a graduate, her recruiter called her and then she was whisked away for basic by the end of the year. 

After her 'break' upon the attack, she had no longer spoken of nor had Jarvis' alerts of her nightmares or of the things she saw or heard from the 'visions' that Pepper would regale to him when they were together in his lab. Worry was a slow buzz that didn't want to go away. And although he was quiet and showed every bit to be a proud brother as she got in formation with other recruits. Tony had a very bad feeling as he stood by Obi and watched her march with a duffle over her right shoulder onto the bus that would take her to South Carolina. Granted he had insisted on doing a flight to take her to the base but she insisted that she ride with the others just like her: Determined to do her duty to her country.

Instead of the Air Force blue and silver colors that he usually tied with Rhodey…..his sister would be donning the scarlet and gold of the US Marine Corp when she was to return, if she did not immediately deploy, from boot camp.

_Spring 2002- Tony age 32, Rhea 19_

12 weeks had passed and the sun was blazing overhead. Spring had arrived and before his blue eyes there were colors of Semper Fi, the state flags as well the large behemoth which was the US flag standing tall behind each of the recruits which were graduating on this day. 3 months after Tony received the call from Rhea stating that she would correspond in a week's time with a PO Box and that she was to receive no large parcels, food and that she had arrived safely to the training base: At 3 AM. Her voice was brusque and to the point in which it made something go cold inside. He would have been foolish enough to try and send her a phone but her letter that he first received almost halfway into her first month of training told him in clear terms that she was serious about this being her career, about being a soldier and doing her duty to protect her country as well as gain field experience that could help with making gear to better protect the soldiers that fought for their country and also to not send her anything that wasn't permissible. The exchange of letters between the siblings for the past few months actually brought the pair closer. No longer were they just people that shared half of their genetics from the same sperm donor. Nor were they no longer just pieces in the Stark Dynasty that brought forth designs for weapons and gear that were to help in the new era of war and iron, they became siblings. Even as he was home in-between meetings and parties with a teenager who would call him brother, there really had been no real interaction until she was not haunting his lab with ideas or small talk of pondering why people made big deals out of the smallest things.

Wearing a ballcap and shades, Tony was trying to be discrete in his presence. No one knew that he had a sister enlisting. The world knew of Tony but he was trying to make sure to keep Rhea not in the limelight as he was. Genius she may be but she was more normal, had actual friends that she didn't have to flaunt money to keep around or to sleep with in order to weasel a deal. Obi was supposed to be here as well but the elder man took an emergency board meeting in his stead for him to not miss this ceremony: To see his sister in her dress uniform and to take her oath. The last letter Tony got that came with the details for the family day and graduation day was also a letter that originally put the heavy lead sensation into his stomach and reminded him of the hollowed feeling he had when he got her 3 AM call those months back, Details of deployment. She would have a bit more training to do since many jobs for military women weren't open. Rhea wanted to do infantry but women weren't allowed in direct combat but were allowed as support. She was getting that opportunity and soon.

She was going to be a part of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and would be a part of the 6th Engineer Support Battalion whose home base was in Portland, Oregon

That was months away though. Her extra training would start after a week post-graduation. Enough time for Tony to get to know the sister he never had the time to spend with until now.

She stood proudly with her battalion; her commanding officer was a beauty as were many of the other recruits. Women who felt the call in their bones just like their male brethren to take up the sword and be the country's first defense. At ease but in line for orders, the women in the group had their shoulders back and chins forward and eyes sharp. Cropped hair weighed down by the white hat upon the crowns of their heads or no hair visible for their hair being wound in tight buns behind their heads. As the band started to play and each unit were walked out, friends and family members around them were cheering or crying with pride of their recruits which were graduating today.

The ceremony began and along with the heavy lead in his stomach, Tony felt great pride as the woman he called sister marched. There were a few officer candidates that were in the battalion and reminded him of his sister's letter of her plans in the Marines after her initial deployment and enlistment. She wanted to become an officer and get her college education to achieve it. At that thought his lips quirked into a grin and he shook his head. He knew that he should have kept their father's room with all of a certain soldier's memorabilia hidden from her. The old black and white films of a spangled man shooting at Nazis and protecting his country, newspaper clippings of a man that at impossible odds achieved so much, the comics that Tony had once collected before the jaded feelings of inadequacy made him seal that room with all the things that Howard Stark had gotten him as a boy before the alcohol and company took away the man who had helped win the World War.

Tony should have honestly seen it coming. Really he should have seen it as plain as day. Her life was around making weapons and assisting soldiers in the means of their DOD contracts alongside him. She had designed a new type of flack vest that took almost 5 pounds off the soldiers that were already wearing 100+ pounds of weapons, ammo and potentially having to assist a wounded soldier. Upon the conclusion of the ceremony, hearing his sister's resounding battle cry along with her fellow brothers and sisters-in arms nailed the lead to forever stay in the pit of his stomach.

Little did he know….that this choice in his sister's life and his choice upon a missile plan not even 6 years from now would seal their fate. A dance which will come from imprisonment, torture, blood, pain and having metal crawl through certain pieces of the body; A dance of which will play with the sanity of a person who will gain and yet loose anything and everything. Of darker and hidden stories that would only be regaled upon the highest peak of stress in the most desperate of situations.

This story would be of brother and sister that didn't realize that they needed each other as much as they did until they're torn at the seams by both emotional distance but also the distance of time, space and parallel dimensions.

TBC… Chapter 1: Fallout of 2004

Author's Notes Cont.: Yeah. I am jumping the bandwagon for a Sailor Moon/Avengers crossover. I have been planning this since before the Avengers movie and will be blending comic canon with the MCU elements. Constructive Critique is greatly welcomed and eventually this is going to be cross-posted onto AO3 but I really want to get my feet wet again before going onto there. There are just so many people I think are like MASTER LEVEL writers that just love their fandom are able to beautifully orchestrate a story. A lot of research is going into the military parts with the Marines, documentaries and my Veteran Marine grandfather. I am more familiar with the Air Force since my father was in it, sadly since he passed in 2010 I don't have a really close source that I can ask about for USAF without it being awkward. (A lot of my father's friends he was in the service with have either been killed in the desert or they just stopped talking to my mother and my sisters since my dad is gone)


	2. What Diverted Paths Were Paved

War Song

Chapter 0.5: What Diverted Paths Were Paved

Trigger warnings: Infantile and Maternal deaths

The air which surrounded the Hikawa Shrine was not as familiar as it had once been. Maybe a few incarnations back the fresh scent of the cherry blossoms in bloom would settle the heaviness which weighed in the heart. Flashes of a face that was so familiar and yet not one that matched to the Spiritual Center and a burning ember that had always helped in their cause. Raven hair and violet eyes which had held mystery, a hidden passion and yet a heavy burden that held. Of a loneliness to be something that made the familiar specter not only ever-present because of their duty that was etched in blood. An oath that, in those previous incarnations, made their Spiritual Guide almost too aloof and leaving themselves vulnerable to their own self-destructive tendencies. So long as no blood heir were to be born from their womb they would be, forever-more, bound to the Earth and to the power of the star of which was her soul's core.

This once beautiful temple that was once under the care of a Fire Princess garbed in the drapes of a priestess, without her existence, was a damaged piece. A once vibrant focal point that stood alone in the aftermath of nature's wrath. The temple's flames which were sacred had been snuffed out. No patrons have visited in such a long time since the last family member whom cared for the temple had passed. The elderly man, widowed so young with a young daughter, had been quite the queer fellow; chasing the young pretty patrons that would pay homage and hang charms to the many kami for good fortune. One of the many things following the passing of his wife that made his life to leave him quicker was the death of his only daughter. Sakura Hino such a young and vibrant dreamer had married a politician not long after her high school courses were completed. Young love had held her heart stead-fast as her logic and hearing took a convenient holiday. Although her life would carry on for at least another decade it was when she came to be with child that the timer started to count down. Her husband leaving his still-young wife on her own more often in favor of his career was one of the many factors which lead to her demise.

It was a chilled, rainy April morning in which her body gave way to the signs of her child's readiness into the world. Yet the pain was so strong and overwhelming to where Sakura had known right away that there was something wrong. The weeks leading up to this day had been so quiet, so lonely, that voices in her head started to sing to her.

'_It is not time for her my dear. She must sleep longer.'_

'_She does not belong here, she is needed elsewhere.'_

'_She must be born anew. Away from here.'_

'_Her fate is to be rewritten.'_

The voices would sing in a melody that was almost beautiful. Like the voices of angels calling to her unborn daughter. Yet she knew, deep down in her soul, that they were voices of the demons which had haunted her dreams on multiple occasions. The dreams which were filled with fire, pain and loss: Of a crimson-haired woman standing alone in an empty field that was covered in blood as tears of the same color ran down her pale cheeks. Sword in hand as flames would dance as if under her command. This woman in her dreams would be crying, begging or just silent as the death which surrounded her would keep her constant company.

As Sakura had tried to hail assistance to a hospital as she had stood on that street curb she knew that the child whom had been with her, in her, was going to die before taking her first breath. Hours in a sterile hospital room before she felt the pains and aches of her body take its toll; she had felt it. It was such a fleeting feeling which made tears of grief spill silently on her cheeks. She had sworn she heard a soft sigh against her ear before the monitors blared and her body convulsed. The sound of that sigh, it sounded like that of someone that was tired…..exhausted to the point of breaking: Restless with no reprieve.

Sakura knew as she felt her heart cease to beat that the sigh was that of her daughter as her life slipped from her.

As the woman's body gave in and her heart stopped its beating all attempts were changed to trying to save the life nestled between her hips. The babe's blood pressure plummeting was the marker for the medical team to hastily open up the now-deceased woman to get the child out. Not even with a minute's passing though, the babe was retrieved, it was too late.

A small baby girl, completely blue, with umbilical cord wrapped around her neck had been what had taken the child as the separation of its safety bubble from the mother's uterus giving way to massive blood loss lead to Sakura's death.

The elderly man whom had made a fast arrival upon his daughter's admission into the emergency ward had been the only one there to see his daughter's body shrouded in sheets along with his would-have-been granddaughter. Her husband was nowhere to be seen until much later and after the elderly man had wept bitter tears of pain at the injustice of it all. As he had rested a hand over his covered daughter and granddaughter he whispered a broken prayer for the kami to protect them and keep them. With the mantra of his daughter's name upon his lips, so did too the name which had been chosen for the stillborn girl whom went with her mother.

Rei Hino

A name in which, in a different life, held much power and authority. Strong loyalty and morality for a warrior's hidden identity in a world which was filled with demons and beings which were out to cause harm to those less than able to defend themselves; A champion of good.

But in this life, she was not to be there…

Instead the soul which was to have been Rei Hino was born elsewhere…..

In a different world, in a similar setting, with no birth mother to nurture her and no true parent but under the care of a man much worse than that of a serpent in ambition and hunger for control.

Rei Hino was born as Rhea Abigail Stark

Her journey was only just beginning as the call to war thrummed through her veins

An ancient beat and song, a dance of which was familiar to her and yet foreign

It came at the time of great pain and loss

She never had expected it

She never wanted to believe it

The signs had all been there

But she ignored them

More could be said about her start into the abyss which was part of her truer nature as a harbinger child of war. But that is part of our tale to tell.

As she donned the lightly dusted colors of ash, tan and chips. The colors which had been donned by other soldiers before her as they journeyed through the sweltering heat of the desert sands, her fate had been sealed and the challenges ahead of her were to be set in stone. Her sanity to be tested and her being to be broken and then reformed before the final evolution that would give way to the Soldier and Warrior Princess the fates needed her to become.


End file.
